"what if..."

[Seduzal]

There was not a American Civil War?

 

[kel1985]

Slavery eventually would have died out, my guess is by the early 20th century.
Our military wouldn't have developed the weaponry we did, which would have left us behind the eightball for the Spanish American War and possibly WWI.
Lincoln probably would have been a one term president.
Grant, Garfield, Hayes and McKinley may not have been elected.
These are of course in my humble opinion only, and given more time I could think of other significant differences. But this may be food for fodder.

 

[mikekj]

We'd be pretty bored right now.

Or on the Mexican-American or Spanish-American war page.

 

[KeyserSoze]

I'd be wasting my Saturday night web surfing somewhere else.

 

[Barrycdog]

One would ask then would the Civil Rights Movement had came earlier and took on a different meaning. We already had abolitionists, Harriet Tubman, the Dred Scott decision, etc You still had John Brown So saying there was no war then we also say perhaps John Brown never took action. Robert E. Lee would not have left the US Army. So we could only guess that some other event would have happened hopefully non violent. Lets say there were more people alive who like Eli Whitney perfected a method of cotton cultivation. Perhaps our friend George Washington Carver found a cotton picker that eliminated the need for slave labor. The situation or attitude would have still remained the same and slave education and progress would have been an issue. I think for things to have changed for slaves the civil rights movement would have started earlier. Who that leader would have been or whether or not that [person was from the South or North would be speculation? Perhaps Douglas or Booker T Washington or perhaps their children...

 

[Seduzal]

This question has puzzled me for a long time.

There was not a American Civil War?

All of these answers to my question makes me still wonder 'what if'
Where would this country be in history: more family's, more children, other wars? What would we be doing, more or less: faming, logging, other industry, would we be living in small log cabins or what we have now?
Still wondering....

 

[Elennsar]

The obvious question - why is there not an ACW?

"No American Civil War because secession never occurs despite Lincoln's election." is a very different world than "No American Civil War because the Confederacy acquires all of what it wanted without war." which is very different from "Lincoln is never elected."

Just to name three. Simply asking us to speculate on the absence of an ACW without knowing what events have happened up to the point history took a left turn is immensely difficult.

 

[major bill]

I can not see the Civil Right Movement beginning earlier if slavery continued for another 50 years or so. In my opinion slavery would have lasted until the 1970 to 1980s. I am basing some of this on Jim Crow Laws in the South. It was illegal to even talk about freeing the slaves in many southern States at the time of the Civil War. I also do not see how a Civil Right Movement could have succeeded without Northern help and I am not sure the North would have seen Civil Rights as a national issue. I have a feeling the North would have seen slavery and Civil Rights as a Southern issue and not been very interested in supporting an end to them. A Constitution Amendment outlawing slavery would have been difficult to pass before Alaska and Hawaii became states., I do not see the votes needed to do so being there before 1960s. When did congress pass the Civil Rights laws pass? The mid 1960s.

 

[5fish]

I think slavery would have end by the end of the 19th century because the rest of the world would have shamed us into it... I do think Jim Crow type laws would have replaced slavery and these laws would have even been more restrictive. Then the ones that arose after the civil war. Civil movement would have been delayed by decades if not a century and the 13th, 14th, 15th amendment would never have been...

 

[Gwynplaine]

Slavery eventually would have died out, my guess is by the early 20th century.
Our military wouldn't have developed the weaponry we did, which would have left us behind the eightball for the Spanish American War and possibly WWI.
Lincoln probably would have been a one term president.
Grant, Garfield, Hayes and McKinley may not have been elected.
These are of course in my humble opinion only, and given more time I could think of other significant differences. But this may be food for fodder.

Without the Civil War, things will be radically different. There would not be a Spanish-American War as we know it.

Events, and therefore history, do not occur in a vacuum. And with one change, other things begin to change, roughly at the 'speed of information'. The speed of information is whatever the time it takes for others in another place to become aware something is different. Let's pick an easy change, one that doesn't rely on the death of a historical figure. Say that, for whatever reason, no consensus can be brought about on the Southern side of the coin, and therefore the Confederacy dies in the cradle. This will begin to snowball. Due to this, Britain has no real reason to start really pushing to grow cotton in the Raj and other areas. The United States, therefore, is quite a bit more wealthy in this timeline than in our own. This extra wealth might show itself in the US participating in the Scramble for Africa. If not the American government, then surely the private citizenry. And since slavery would be abolished through political means, this ends with the South keeping parity(roughly) in regards to general wealth with the North.

So, let's assume that slavery is abolished in, oooh, 1869. But only in name. It's replaced with indentured servitude. Hey, that isn't slavery! Most peoples' consciences are then clean, because the 1800s had yet to invent human rights(that's a joke). The Plantation Aristocracy then, has a lot of money. And they likely want more. So, they take a page from the Europeans and form a Colonial Company. Ect, ect, by the time you get to 2014 the world is completely alien.

No WW1(as we knew it), no WW2(as we knew it). Lots of things will change from this.